Rough week, gastrointestinally speaking

- Hawaiian Punch, age 6. (By way of context, we were heading to the school carnival, where Jammies was staffing the lollipop booth.)

The carnival was standard-stupid. The best booth was a fake-injury booth: they pour some fake blood on some gauze, put it somewhere on you, and then wrap it up as a sprained wrist, arm-in-torn-t-shirt-sling, head wound injury, or what have you.

Hawaii first getting the bloody wound...

And then getting the dressing on top:

Then you push on the outer bandage so that the blood will soak through a bit.

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Hokey Pokey is back in skirts again. (He'd outgrown his old skirts and had a season where he vocally did not want any more.) He spent this week in skirts.

The cowboy boots really clinch the preacher's daughter look.

His preschool teacher is pure gold: first, no one teaches four year olds in a skirt, and second, I know her to be enough of a butch-ish lesbian who never wears skirts anyway. She arranged to have a Special Skirt Day with Pokey. They both wore skirts and we took a photo. She is the absolute best.

Scampering off, nice cheetah named Sven.

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Did I write about Jammies' migraine? A month ago, he had a complete, day-long, puking-from-pain migraine. Awful. I mostly just want to date and document it for future reference.

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We all went out for ice cream, for the girls' birthdays. Ace would not take a bite of her ice cream. It was a chocolate mess of toppings and ice cream. She kept saying it was dirty. She wanted bright rainbow colors, like Hawaii's sorbet.

We kept cajoling her to try her chocolate mess, in the perverse dance of parenting, but she out-stubborned us. "It's not dirty! It's dusty!" said Hawaii, quasi-helpfully.

Eat this: it's not dirty, it's dusty!

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Hokey Pokey's current favorite song is Teenage Dirtbag, by Wheatus. It's more awesomely-stupid than I remembered. In my memory, it was just straightforwardly stupid.

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Hawaiian Punch was making breakfast for the other kids. "We should have little aprons, for the oatmeal!" she exclaimed, bustling about. Pokey cried, "Yeah! And big aprons for ourselves!"

That is such a great image, channeling Amelia Bedilia, that Pokey thought Hawaii was proposing we put little aprons on the oatmeal. As long as we're dressing the oatmeal, we ought to have coordinating aprons of our own!

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One single present made Hawaii literally shriek spontaneously when she opened it: a box of Lucky Charms. Hawaii and Ace also got assorted doll accessories, stuffed animals, and we're taking Hawaii and Pokey to see Annie, the musical, this afternoon. (But that was planned six months though and just happened to coincide.) Also Hawaii is getting her ears pierced.

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Every single member of the household, besides the adults and Rascal, have managed to lose their bowels uncontrollobly this week. Carpet, bean bags, sheet sets, have all been laundered. Two nights, nearly all night long, featured kids camped out on the toilet (and in quite a bit of pain). It's been a rough week, gastrointestinally.

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Our friend is in the grips of the school board election. Local politics, man. It is a crazy beast, and I'm reeling from this crash course in local politics. I have an urge to spraypaint SLUT all over the lead good old boy's signs around town.

The high was 96 degrees yesterday; the nearly-naked people are out again. The river is once again peopled. Lots and lots of people in small bathing suits.

There aren't exactly stories about this one:

but he's cute and super cuddly, and getting nicely chubby.

I'm going to have to bite the bullet and put Big Kitty to sleep this week, I think. He's so wobbly on his feet, and not coming around to be petted very much anymore. He seems to be shutting down.

Yes it's so deeply weird! Thank you for also being jolted by the nuttiness, because I swear to god, everyone just milled around like this is what we do. We mill around, manufacturing pretend scrapes and concussions as a fundraiser for the PTA.